It's been a while since I updated my blog. Time just passed along, while life captivated me with all its facets. But today is a royal blue sunshine day - perfect to share a fresh compilation of music from the Caribbean - mainly music from the French Antilles: Compas. Cadence. Cadence Rampa. Biguine. Meringue. Mini-Jazz. Compas Direct. Gwo-Ka. All music which is part of the rich musical & cultural heritage of the Caribbean – and which I am still trying to „understand“ and get an ear for. Since I shared some of my favourite songs and sounds from the Antilles on the Where the Palm Trees shake at Night compilation here a few months ago, I have been busy listening to every record from the Caribbean – which wasn't Reggae or Calypso – and which was recorded somewhere between the early 60ies to mid-80ies – and here is Sweet Grooves & Sounds from the Antilles – a selection of songs that move & groove my soul. Enjoy!

DubMe

PS: Thanks to Duendiness for introducing me to „Guadaloupe Ile De Mes Amours“ (song #18). A tune recorded in 1978 by the gwo-ka master, Erick Cosaque, a percussionist and singer. Traditional gwo-ka mixed with a soul funk feeling and some deep, spiritual & beautiful saxophone playing...

And a big THANKS to Abtomic from Greece for contributing his beautiful edit of Les Kings – Oriza (song #12) to this compilation. Truely a nice edit of one of my favourite songs from the mighty Tumbele compilation on Soundway Records. Keeping the original flavour and laidbackness but adding a sweet bouncing beat... Summer is around the Corner. Be sure to check him out on soundcloud, some of his mixes full of grooves, beatz & sunshine on mixcloud or his weekly Green Room Show @ ParanoiseWebRadio (every Wednesday at 16:00-18:00 (GMT+02:00) live from Athens). Surely a lot of good music coming out of Greece lately. You can steal their money, but you can't take away their culture, their spirit, their soul... The wake up is globally approaching critical mass and starting to erupt in mainstream society. The walls are coming down. Babylon falling. Globally. Here in Japan – "Rage against Radiation": Frying Dutchman - humanERROR... Thank You!

Saturday, March 17, 2012

I thought I just quickly share the ~ a month in tunes 24.0 ~ December 2011 favourites selection by fellow blogger Duendiness. It again is a treasure box full of good music - covering various styles, places & times: 1. 2. 3. 4. No tracklist this time – it's just too long. These are some of my favourites – enjoy:

Here is Beatz & Carrots #5 for your musical pleasure. Starting with The Return of the King by Mop Mop - which serves as an intro to this months compilation. And what an intro! The second song is the brilliantUna Peripecia by Buddy Sativa, a bossa-swinging-jazz-exotique-jungle-latin tune – which takes over from Mop Mop's mysterious intro – and gives the listener a very first impression in which direction this compilation is heading... And bam! Track #3 takes no prisoners! The amazing "Skalypso Vamp" by Jeremy Sole's Musaics which got the right remix treatment by Nickodemus. Groovy. Swinging. Steel Drums. Discolypso. Global Grooves. Tropical Sunshine. Finally got myself a good copy of this song. This one can be played out loud! Track #5 is Bleepolar's Bogota Cumbia remix of Anthony B's Dem Can't Stop We From Talk from Subatomic Sound's "Dem Can't Stop We From Talk" remix album. Dancehall meets Cumbia – nothing new to us! Masterful remix straight outta Colombia. Heavy Banger! My favourite remix from that album – and luckily shared for free on their soundcloud page! So we can all listen to it now... Track #7 is DJ Rudd's To The Beats Y'all (Old School Edit) – a soulful groovin', kickin' & breaking song with some nice horn action! Which was finally made downloadable via Ghettofunk's Spinforths Weekly Soundcloud Scour. "Testify" - track #8 is by Tommy Mccook and the Supersonics. Cool Cool Rocksteady! And some masterful saxophone playing! On track #10 we get Jeremy Sole masterfully remixing Muddy Waters Worried Mind. I love his remixes. It's never too much and never too little... just the right amount of ingredients. I wrote about this remix in an earlier post here. The Pedders "Boma Yea" - track #14 was a real surprise! I came across it via DJ BushBeats very good Groove comes in many Colors mix on soundcloud. It's a remix of "Boma Yeah" by Ras Michael & The Sons of Negus. The Ras Michael song is a deep deep meditation. Beautiful and haunting. But I also really like the remix - which adds a new dimension to the song - deep heavy sounds for the good dancefloor! If you need an introduction to the Nyahbingi sounds of Ras Michael – check his brilliant masterpiece Dadawah -Peace and Love (1974) which just got re-released by Dug Out records. Track #15 is a Fort Knox Five Edit of the ever great song "A Message To Rudy" by the Specials. Another reason why I like this edit is because of the intro telling us "Roots Music can never die..." Track #16 is Syclops "Where's Jason's K" - a zany electronic dance song – "which is basically nothing more than an inspired and stupidly addictive bassline for most of the track's six and a bit minutes. In the middle there's a crescendo of floaty effects, weird shit and an electronic organ all reminiscent of ‘70s funk wigouts, but 'K' is all about wilfully being hammered by bassline" (residentadvisor.net). Track #18 is the extended Disco version of "Aged In Harmony – You're A Melody", which was released on the "deep in my crates" Under The Influence Vol. 1 CD, compiled by DJ Red Greg. This is what the liner notes say: "'Aged in Harmony' were a Detroit Michigan based group, who released a sequence of three great 45s on the short lived Mor-Tones record label all off which have become very desirable in recent years. The song was also recorded by Gary and The Browns simply entitled 'Melo Melody'. I remember seeing 'You're A Melody' on various occasions online only a few years ago going for very little money. Since then it has gained plenty of interest, which has caused the price to soar and it has been commanding a 3-figure price tag. Regardless of value, it's a very nice mid-tempo disco soul song..." - Yes! It's a very nice mid-tempo disco soul song that just has that little something special to it. And I love it!

DubMe

PS: This compilation fits perfectly on one CD – just click "NO PAUSE BETWEEN TRACKS" - and the CD will be exactly 79:38 long – so burn it & share it...

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Here finally is my January 2012 Beatz & Carrots #4 compilation. Some good songs in here, old and new. And it also flows quite nicely when you listen to the compilation in its entirety. Beatz & Carrots #5 is already compiled as well. Just need to write a few lines, upload it – and it should then be shared on this blog within the next few days. Until then – keep yourself busy with this tracklist:

01 - dedy dread - go miller

02 - sono rhizmo' - mambocito mio

03 - benny berigan - caravan

04 - little walter - up the line

05 - restless leg syndrome - hornrace

06 - nynfus corp. - yetti

07 - le grand orchestre de paul mauriat - vole, vole farandole

08 - tenoshi - monsta monche (tenoshi version)

09 - phyllis dillon - perfidia

10 - unknown - cumbia (soundcloud)

11 - stretch - why did you do it

12 - the electric sideshow soundsystem - give me your number

13 - culture - we a boss

14 - the soul session - root down

15 - discotech - the boss

16 - brooklyn shanti - rani rani

17 - the soul session - horse with no name suite (desert intro)

18 - the soul session - horse with no name suite (horse with no name)

19 - the soul session - horse with no name suite (out of the rain)

20 - ahmad zahir - che kelaf sar zad az mah

21 - dj catalist - everybody

22 - pan di-hua - midnight kiss

Giving some credits to all the artists and musicians out there who are enriching our lifes with grooves, musical sunshine and love everyday – The first song is Go Miller by Dedy Dread, which he shared as a little Christmas gift on his soundcloud page last year. Beautiful song – which seems to get better every time I listen to it. The intro is one of the best out there: "Hello and Greetings to all those Punks out there... 'coz I am the King of the Punks (What kind of records to you play for your own pleasure – as it were?) Generally I play Soul music, Jazz music, I love Calypso music. I love all type of music (inaudible). Generally listening to Jazz..." - "Generally listening to Jazz"... Ahhh! That line kills it for me. Beautiful! „Mambocito Mio“ - the second song is a tasty beefed up Latin/Mambo Groover by Sono Rhizmo'. That song got released on Resense records (# 004) back in 2007. But somehow I missed it. Resense records, which seems to be a sub-label (!?) of the equally great Agogo Records (check them out on soundcloud) is one of the top labels out there releasing groovy, funky, swinging, soulful music with all of our favorite artists out there! The third song Caravan by Benny Berigan is a brilliant take on the Jazz standard "Caravan", originally composed by Juan Tizol and first performed by Duke Ellington in 1937. That song (and its various covers) has always been a favorite of mine – and Benny Berigan definitely adds his own twist to it - making it a dirty whirling desert groover – or as someone on soundcloud put it "I feel like Alibaba traveling the desert at night!" - Jaaa! The next song "Up The Line" by Little Walter from 1963 was another surprice find. What a groover. While I was listening to this compilation a few times I caught myself wondering "What song is that?!" - having as much swing and raw power as Brenda Boykin's Hard Swing Travellin' Man – only to find out every time that it is that Little Walter song way back from 1963. Song #5 keeps the groove and the swing – going Cumbia: Restless Leg Syndrome – Hornrace and their version of "Cumbia en do menor" by Lito Barrientos – one of my Top 10 Cumbia songs of all time: heavy percussion, stomping horns, tropical madness! You can download the whole EP "name your price" on their bandcamp site. The remaining 17 songs are equally great and eclectic – but I now ought to do some more compiling - finish compiling questions for a survey on "Vegetarianism in China" which I need for my thesis.

The "cover" or rather image I shared with this compilation is a picture of a German "Sex" record called "St Pauli Nachrichten" on the Porno Records label (St Pauli being the Red Light District of Hamburg) which I bought many many years ago when I "got into" collecting "sex records". I can still remember when a friend first told me that he, beside collecting Exotica and Incredibly Strange Music records, also collects sex records. I was like "eh?!" - what are Sex records? Well, basically in the 50, 60 and 70... until we had Super 8mm film and video cassettes more generally available – records where still the format of the day – and so "Porn" was sold on record to some degree. I assume. It was a huge surprise when I first heard dialogues like "F##k me harder" on a German record from the 60ies. Don't know – maybe I was under the impression that people back then didn't have Sex or whatever... After this first "introduction" I surrendered myself to the mission of finding all these Sex records. And it was no easy task finding the real ones – or could you imagine your grandmother going to a second hand record shop saying "I here have some old records which me and my husband bought in the 60ies". But over the course of the years I found some records which were incredibly great and funny: sex plays with hilarious dialogues (who wrote them?!), 60 minutes of moaning over some African percussion, a record with just the sounds of a squeaking creaking bed, a porn version of Kafka's "The Trial" - which was so kafkaesque that I wanted to trash it after listening to it the first and only time... bahh! And records which just had great covers or other gimmicks – like the one I used for this post. Stay tuned and find out how the amazing 4x gatefold cover of this record opens up and reveals a secret place during the next few Beatz & Carrots posts...